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India gives separate voter identity to 'third gender' population

Moongirl — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:47:02 GMT

India's third gender gets own identity in voter rolls
By Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
-Indian election authorities granted independent identity to intersex and transsexuals on voter lists
-Voters will have the choice of ticking "O" for others on voting forms
-Intersexual people are seen as a marginalized community in India
-In July, an Indian court delivered a landmark ruling legalizing gay sex between consenting partners

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- Indian election authorities Thursday granted what they called an independent identity to intersex and transsexuals in the country's voter lists.

Before, members of these groups -- loosely called eunuchs in Indian English -- were referred to as male or female in the voter rolls.

But now, they will have the choice to tick "O" -- for others -- when indicating their gender in voter forms, the Indian election commission said in a statement.

"Enumerators and booth-level officers (BLOs) shall be instructed to indicate the sex of eunuchs/transsexuals etc as 'O' if they so desire, while undertaking any house-to-house enumeration/verification of any application," a statement from election authorities said.

India, home to more than 1 billion people, has 714 million registered voters.

Intersexual people are seen as a marginalized community in India. Many end up begging on the streets, becoming prostitutes or earning their livelihood by dancing at celebrations.

In July, an Indian court delivered a landmark ruling legalizing gay sex between consenting partners in the country.

The July verdict meant the law -- Indian penal code section 377, which had previously criminalized consensual homosexual acts between adults -- was partly struck down but remains in place as far as forced homosexual acts are concerned.

It was not clear whether the ruling -- which was later challenged by an astrologer in India's highest court -- would eventually lead to legalization of gay marriages in the country.

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India's third gender gets own identity in voter rolls - CNN.com

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20 years ago today - Berlin Wall falls

witchcurlgirl — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:08:59 GMT

Merkel, Sarkozy Mark 20 Years After Berlin Wall Fell

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel called it the �happiest day in German history.� French President Nicolas Sarkozy drove all the way from Paris to witness it, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said it helped build trust.

World leaders are gathering in the German capital today to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, an event that precipitated the collapse of communism across eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War and led to German reunification within less than a year.

�This day changed the lives of many people, mine included,� Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, said in a video message posted on the Chancellery Web site two days ago.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are among those who will be at the Brandenburg Gate, which once loomed over the barbed-wire barrier that divided East and West Berlin for 28 years until the night of Nov. 9, 1989.

Merkel and the representatives of the four powers that controlled Berlin from the end of World War II until then -- Britain, France, the U.S. and Russia -- will symbolically walk through the gate at the climax of the �Fest der Freiheit,� or Freedom Festival.

�The wall that had imprisoned half a city, half a country, half a continent, half a world for nearly a third of a century was swept away by the greatest force of all: the unbreakable spirit of men and women who dared to dream,� Brown will say in a speech tonight, according to excerpts e-mailed by his office.

The party will feature 1,000 giant dominoes made to look like Wall segments lining a 1.5 kilometer (0.9 mile) stretch of the original.

Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement who went on to become Polish president, is due to topple the first domino, setting off a chain across the city.

The commemorations began with a service at the Gethsemane Church in eastern Berlin, center of the peaceful protest movement that helped bring down the Wall.

From there, Merkel, Walesa and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, architect of the policies that loosened Moscow�s grip over its East European dominions, walked over the bridge at Bornholmer Strasse, a former east-west crossing point. That was where thousands of East Berliners amassed 20 years ago demanding passage to the West, after an unexpected announcement by the communist government allowing visa-free travel.

While there was confusion about the law, border guards at the checkpoint were unable to turn back the crowd and gave way, triggering the breakdown of the heavily guarded border.

�We weren�t the first in Germany, but we were there when the Cold War collapsed,� Merkel told crowds at the spot where she herself crossed into the West when the wall came down.

Bornholmer Strasse was the epicenter of events 20 years ago, said Jan Techau, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
�After it was really open, people immediately began to attack the Wall itself, to chisel away at it,� Techau said.

Among them was a 34-year-old Sarkozy, then a lawmaker in France�s lower house of parliament. He had jumped in a car that morning with Alain Juppe, a future prime minister, to witness the change they felt was coming. When they arrived, the Wall was already being breached and Sarkozy joined in.

�We headed for Checkpoint Charlie to see the eastern side of the city and finally confront this Wall and I was able to take a pickaxe to it,� Sarkozy wrote on his official Facebook Internet site yesterday. He attached a photograph showing him in front of the Wall.

The images beamed around the world of Germans and others hacking away at the Wall often took place with the Brandenburg Gate as the backdrop. Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin in front of the Gate. The evening concludes with fireworks and a dinner for leaders hosted by Merkel.

The Berlin Wall�s fall �was an iconic moment,� yet �there wasn�t anything inevitable about it,� Clinton said in a speech to the Atlantic Council in Berlin yesterday. �History could have gone another way -- and in some parts of the world it did and it has.�

Putin, who served as a KGB agent in East Germany at the time, told Russia�s NTV television yesterday that Russia �might have done something differently to protect our interests.�

�What had to happen, happened,� Putin said of the events of 1989 and 1990. �Dividing the nation had no future. It was obvious to me that it�s impossible to hold back a nation in the modern world.�

The commemoration events have also brought together many of the key players who shaped events in 1989. On Oct. 31, former President George H.W. Bush joined his German counterpart from the time, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and Gorbachev at a ceremony in central Berlin.

Merkel, the first chancellor from former East Germany, said that Kohl�s promise to bring �flourishing landscapes� in the east has come to pass over the past 20 years.

�Things have happened over that period that we simply wouldn�t have thought possible,� she told ARD television.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aGw047TM3jDI

Aceh's morality police on the prowl for violators

celeb_2006 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:43:20 GMT

Aceh's morality police on the prowl for violators -- latimes.com

The Sharia police stop three veiled teenage girls at a beach in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, a city where Islamic religious codes of public behavior are strictly enforced. The girls' crime: wearing tights. They were told to go home immediately and change into proper attire. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The young couple are totally busted. They huddle at a beach-side park, near signs forbidding teens from sitting too close. He has his arm around her shoulder. She isn't wearing her jilbabjilbab, the traditional Islamic head scarf.

Just like that, the morality cops are in their face.

"You two aren't married, right?" asks Syafruddin, the rail-thin leader of the six-man patrol, standing stiffly, one hand behind his back. "So you shouldn't sit next to one another."

He separates the two and confiscates their IDs. Later, he says, the team will open an investigation of the couple, especially because the young man had lied, at first insisting the girl was his sister.

"We want to see how far this relationship has progressed," says Syafruddin, who goes by one name. "What they were doing could have led to something sexual."

The team is known as "the vice and virtue patrol," on the beat in Aceh, the only province in the world's most populous Muslim nation to employ Sharia, or Islamic law, for its criminal code. The laws were introduced in 2002 after the Indonesian region was granted autonomy as part of efforts to end a decades-long guerrilla war.

The Sharia police consider themselves the community's public conscience. And on their weekly patrol, they take seriously their role of enforcing the religious strictures.

Now their mission may become deadly serious.

In September, Aceh's provincial parliament passed a law saying married people who commit adultery can be sentenced to death by stoning. It also toughened laws on public caning, adding more lashes for gays, pedophiles and gamblers.

The new law, which still requires the approval of the provincial governor, has outraged human rights groups here, who say the code unfairly targets women and violates international treaties.

They say the law cuts even deeper into private lives. Under the guidelines, the Sharia police could even raid hotel rooms in search of violators, develop informants and work undercover.

Many of Indonesia's 200 million Muslims are moderates. Some worry that the law will discourage much-needed foreign investment in a province leveled by the 2004 tsunami.

None of it fazes the Sharia police.

"We know many foreigners and some Indonesians do not understand this," says Marzuki Abdullah, commander of the 1,500-member Sharia force.

"But Muslims must obey the law. They must go to prayer, do their fasting. Women should dress in an acceptable way.

"Our job is to make sure that they do."

Worse for women

Norma Manalu wistfully runs her colorful purple silk jilbab through her fingers. She has a love-hate relationship with the elegant garment.

"It's hot. It's not appropriate for the climate," says the 35-year-old director of Aceh's Human Rights Coalition. "It's something I choose because it's beautiful, not because a man tells me to do so."

Manalu is a rebel. Often, to make a point about women's rights she walks in public wearing jeans, her head uncovered, ignoring the taunts.

She is sickened by the sight of men and women being publicly caned by a tormentor in a mask.

Manalu contends that women get the worst of the bargain. Many are treated as outcasts after their punishment; men are welcomed back into society.

"It amazes me that in a modern world with sophisticated law and order, we even consider doing this," she says. "It's barbaric."

She dismisses the Sharia police, who she believes enjoy harassing young women.

"Men make these rules based on some misguided image of how women should look," she says. "Here in Aceh, women must accept it or suffer harassment."

A mile away, at religious police headquarters, Abdullah dismisses the uproar over the stoning law. And he says the harsher caning laws also have been overblown. Since 2003, he says, only nine people have been caned in Aceh.

"Men take their lashes like the women," he says. "They're equal."

Abdullah is angered each time he sees couples holding hands or a woman without a veil. He favors a proposed ordinance in one Aceh area that would ban women from wearing pants.

"Most pants are too tight," he says. "They show the curves of a woman's body. With many you can see the shadow of the vagina."

But the religious thought police know they cannot fight television, the racy shows broadcast from Malaysia and Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

As Abdullah speaks, an office TV shows a shampoo ad featuring a woman in a towel, caressing her long black hair.

Aceh's top morality cop pauses in mid-sentence. He blushes, then catches himself and scoffs.

Searching for sin

The morality cops are on the move. They crouch in military formation, closing in on their prey.

Beneath a row of gracefully bending palms, they've spotted several shady characters at a lonely beachside youth hangout. They could be unmarried young men cavorting with girls not wearing a proper jilbab. They could be holding hands, kissing or, well, who knows what.

Waves breaking at their feet, the officers round a rocky promontory. They confront six baffled men casting nets into the water.

"They were just fishing," says a disappointed Syafruddin.

And so it goes. All afternoon, they chase down suspects, like the college girls caught without their jilbabs.

As Syafruddin launches into his lecture, a woman wearing a black T-shirt reading "Lucky Girl" examines her shoes.

"For women," the officer says, "wearing a veil is like a motorcycle rider wearing a helmet. It's for your own protection."

When the police move on, the woman shrugs. "I wear a veil at work," she says. "I didn't think it mattered here. It's the beach."

Within moments, the team stops three girls on a motorcycle, all wearing veils. This time, Syafruddin has another problem. Their leggings are too tight, too revealing, he says. They should go home and change them at once.

He walks off in search of other laws to enforce. The girls climb back aboard the motorcycle, looking embarrassed.

One patrolman lingers for a moment. He smiles at the girls.

And then he winks.

The inspiring story of Mariatu Kamara, who survived Sierra Leone's war

Honey — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:44:08 GMT

For 12-year-old Mariatu Kamara, death would have been a welcome release when she was captured by rebel soldiers during Sierra Leone�s brutal civil war. But, as she recounts here, her machete-wielding tormentors had an even crueller fate in store for her�

Mariatu, now 23, and living in Canada

I knelt down in front of my captors, lowered my head, and waited. �OK, little one,� said the older rebel. �Get lost. We don�t want you after all.� I wasn�t sure I had heard the words correctly, so I remained still.
�You can go,� the man repeated, waving his hand this time. �Go, go, go!�
I stood up slowly and turned towards the football pitch. �Wait!� he hollered. I stood motionless as a couple of boys grabbed guns from their backs and pointed them at me. I waited for the older rebel�s order to shoot. Instead, he walked in front of me.
�You must choose a punishment before you leave,� he said. �Like what?� I mumbled. Tears I could no longer hold back streamed down my face.
�Which hand do you want to lose first?� he asked.
The knot in my throat gave way to a scream. �No,� I yelled. I started running, but it was no use. The older rebel caught me, his big arm wrapping around my belly. He dragged me back to the boy rebels and threw me to the ground. Three boys hauled me up by the arms. I was kicking now, screaming, and trying to hit. Gunfire filled the night. �Allah, please let one of the bullets stray and hit me in the heart so I may die,� I prayed.
�Please, please, please don�t do this to me,� I begged one of the boys. �I am the same age as you. Maybe we can be friends.�
�We�re not friends,� the boy scowled, pulling out his machete.
�If you are going to chop off my hands, please just kill me,� I begged them.
�We�re not going to kill you,� one boy said. �We want you to go to the president and show him what we did to you. You won�t be able to vote for him now. Ask the president to give you new hands.�
I didn�t feel any pain. But my legs gave way. I sank to the ground as the boy wiped the blood off the machete and walked away. As my eyelids closed, I saw the rebel boys giving each other high fives. I could hear them laughing. As my mind went dark, I remember asking myself: �What is a president?�

We went to live in a camp for amputees, earning money from begging in the streets. On a good day we could make as much as �2

When I regained consciousness, I felt a surging pain in my stomach. My injured arms instinctively cradled my abdomen. I rolled around in the earth, on to my knees, and staggered to my feet. Still holding my abdomen, I started to put one foot in front of the other. I wanted to get away, away from here, away from this village.
A sharp, darting pain ran up and down my arms. I was sicker than I�d ever been in my life, but I managed to stumble my way to another village for help, and was eventually taken by truck to the capital city, Freetown, where my wounds were treated in hospital. But as I lay recovering, there was another shock.
�You�re pregnant.� I didn�t understand what the female doctor in the white coat was saying. �You are going to have a baby. Do you understand?�
�But there must be a mistake,� I said. �Only women have babies, not girls.�

Mariatu with her baby Abdul and 'sister' Adamsay at a camp for amputees in Sierra Leone in 2000

After it was explained to me how babies were made, I realised what had happened. Salieu, an older man in my village who had declared that he was going to make me his second wife when I grew up, had grabbed me one day when he knew I was the only one at home, and forced me to have sex.
Afterwards he had said, in a harsh, low voice, �Don�t tell anyone.� I didn�t tell anyone what had happened. I wasn�t sure, for one thing, exactly what it was he had done. Now I knew, and I was going to have his baby. Not that Salieu would ever know. The rebels had shot him in front of me during the raid.
Since I was a baby, I�d lived with my father�s sister Marie and her husband Alie in the small village of Magborou. It was common for children in rural areas to be raised by people other than their birth parents. At the time of the rebel attack, in 1999, we were staying in another village, Manarma, because we�d been told we�d be safer there [the rebel soldiers wanted to overthrow the government which they accused of being corrupt]. I saw two of my cousins, Ibrahim and Mohamed, captured and tied up. Adamsay, Marie�s youngest daughter, who I thought of as a sister, was dragged away by her hair.
�Goodbye,� my heart said, as she was taken down the road. I later learned that as many as 100 people were killed that day. Miraculously my three cousins survived, although they�d also had their hands cut off, and we were reunited in Freetown.

One of my proudestmoments came when I wrote my name in a workbook with a pencilheld between my arms

There was some comfort in knowing that we were all learning to care for ourselves after such a devastating ordeal. We were beginning to feed and wash ourselves, even with our injuries. Using the stumps of my arms covered in bandages, I could even brush my teeth and comb my hair. Later I learned to cook, tie shoelaces, do up zips and twist off lids and bottle tops using just my arms and teeth.
After leaving the hospital, we went to live in a camp for amputees, earning money from begging in the streets, even though I hated every moment of it. On a good day, we could make as much as 10,000 leones (just under �2) by pooling our money.
Marie and Alie, who I�d feared had been killed, had escaped the rebels by hiding in the bush and were now living with us in the big tent we shared. The camp, which was the size of a football stadium, was filthy with litter, and the smell of rubbish, dirty bodies and cooking food was sickening. There were more than 400 of us who didn�t have hands, and at least four times that many people, mostly family members, who had moved there to look after the injured.

When the time came for me to give birth, a female doctor explained that my birth canal was too small. �There�s no room for the baby to come out. You�ll need to have an operation called a caesarean.�
The last thing I recall is the doctor sticking a needle into my arm. I had a boy, who I called Abdul. When I went back to begging, I earned more money than my cousins combined if I had him with me. One afternoon, a man dropped 40,000 leones (about �7.50) into my black plastic shopping bag. It was the most money I�d ever earned at one time.
When he was ten months old, Abdul became very sick from malnutrition and, despite hospital treatment, he died. I blamed myself for not loving him enough. My family held a funeral ceremony for him in the camp�s mosque. The imam recited a prayer, and my family asked for blessings. I sat motionless, listening but not really hearing.
When I�d first been in hospital for treatment to my arms, rumours circulated everywhere that there were wealthy people, both in Freetown and in far-off countries, who adopted children who had been injured in the war. About six young people from the camp had moved to the United States, and several others were on a relocation list. But so far no one had shown any interest in me. Then one day I was asked to go to the offices of a social worker called Comfort.
�A man phoned from Canada,� she said. �His name is Bill, and he wants to find the girl he read about in a newspaper article.� Comfort handed me a newspaper clipping. It showed a photo of me holding Abdul when he was five months old. It was from an interview I had been asked to do with some foreign journalists by a camp official.
�This man Bill wants to help you. His family read your story, and they would like to give you money for food and clothes.�
�Is he taking me to Canada?� I asked.
�No. But if you pray for it, maybe he will.�
And, eventually, he did. I flew to Toronto in 2002 and, after a short stay with Bill and his family, I went to live with a Sierra Leonean couple, Kadi and Abou Nabe, who had been living in Canada since before the civil war. When the fighting started, they brought many family members to Toronto to escape the violence.
I shared a room with three girls who were a few years older than me. Each was related to Abou and Kadi, but I couldn�t keep track of exactly how. I just called them all �the nieces�.

One night I confided in Abou that my family in Sierra Leone were depending on me to support them. �I need to get an education, and then a job right away,� I told him.
�You may not have hands, but you still have your mind. And I think you have a very sharp mind. Make the most of what you have and you will make your way in the world,� said Abou.
Despite his words of encouragement, I was scared to go to school. I would be alone, in a class with strangers. I dreamt of being able to read books and write, but I wondered how I would do it with no hands. I was afraid I�d make a fool of myself. Kadi was the one who took the initiative and enrolled me in an English as a Second Language (ESL) course. �When you graduate, you�ll go on to high school. It�s time to get moving, girl!�

My classmates were young Asian women, grandmothers from the Middle East, and men from southern Africa. At first we communicated mostly through gestures, but soon we were saying English words to each other, and within a few months we were forming sentences. One of my proudest moments came when I wrote my name in a workbook with a pencil held between my arms. On a muggy June evening ten months after arriving in Canada, I graduated from my ESL course with a diploma.
When September rolled around, it was time for high school. My tutor was very patient as she taught me cursive writing, with a pencil or pen held between my arms. My teachers gave me extra time to complete tests and examinations. I think I may have failed the first term. But by June, I�d earned Cs across the board.
In the winter of 2004, I was bought a black laptop computer designed for people with disabilities. The mouse was shaped like a big ball, so that I could easily manoeuvre it with my arms. Even though the keyboard was big, it was not easy to master hitting one letter at a time. After my first hour of instruction all I had on my screen was a mismatch of letters and numbers.
That evening I sat and played with my new computer. It took some experimenting, but I finally managed to spell out a complete sentence: �My name is Mariatu Kamara. I live in Toronto, Canada, and like it here very much.�

Mariatu, now 23, speaks fluent English and is studying to be a counsellor for abused women and children. She is a Unicef Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflicts and speaks to groups across North America about her experiences. Although she has been fitted with prosthetic hands, she finds it easier to function without them. The civil war in Sierra Leone was declared over in January 2002, after 11 years.

Adapted from Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland, published by Bloomsbury tomorrow, price �9.99. To order a copy for �8.49, with free p&p, call 0845 155 0711 or visit you-bookshop.co.uk

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1223873/Mariatu-Kamaras-inspiring-story-survived-Sierra-Leones-civil-war.html#ixzz0VZl9mGOA

Afghan girls are burning themselves to escape their marriages

Moongirl — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:17:40 GMT

Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage
Posted: Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:04 PM
Filed Under: Kabul, Afghanistan
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer

HERAT, Afghanistan � We watched a teenage girl die last Friday.

Seventeen-year-old Shirin had been brought to the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit a few days before we met her. Ninety percent of her body was covered in third-degree burns.

Her mother-in-law said Shirin had burned herself by accident. The girl was preparing a meal in the kitchen but somehow confused cooking gasoline with petrol, she said.

But Dr. Mohamed Aref Jalali, the director of the burns unit, said Shirin told him in private that she had set herself on fire deliberately after fighting with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News
Rezagul set herself on fire to escape her marriage to an abusive and much older husband.

Many girls in Afghanistan think self-immolation is the best solution for family problems, according to Jalali.

"[For these girls], it�s no good to solve the problem with the father-in-law, with the mother-in-law," said the doctor. "They think self-immolation will solve the problem."

It�s a "solution" that appears to a major problem in Afghanistan, particularly among young women between the ages 13 and 25.

In the first seven months of this year, medical staff at the Heart�s burns unit � the only one of its kind in the entire country � said they have seen 51 cases of female self-immolation. Only 13 have survived.

The practice comes from Iran, where many Afghan refugees had fled to during the decade long war with the Soviet Union (1979-1989) and the era of mujahideen fighting that followed in the 1990s, said Jalali. But its popularity has spread among Afghan women, often from poor, uneducated backgrounds, where the tradition of child or forced marriages runs strong.

"The forced marriage is the best reason and the important reason, and it starts from the economic problem," said Jalali.

Often in arranged marriages, women are viewed in very stark terms.

"She is here only to wash, to clean, to give baby�and nothing more," said Marie-Jose Brunel, a French volunteer nurse at the burns unit who was full of Gallic warmth and purposeful seriousness. "If they have no freedom, no possibility to study, to be considered like nothing, it�s very, very difficult."

Domestic violence
Shirin was married two years ago when she was 15 years old.

But another patient we found at the hospital, down the hall from Shirin, was Rezagul. Skinny and illiterate, the 13-year-old was married at 11 to a man who was almost 20 years older. He was abusive, she told us, beating her whenever she failed to do her housework. So did the other in-laws. "My cruel sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband�they beat me," she said.

Out of frustration and homesickness for her own family, Rezagul took drastic action.

"I was in very bad condition," she recalled. "I poured gasoline on myself and set myself on fire. I didn�t want to be alive." The burns covered the lower half of her body.

It took several months for her skin to heal properly and she was currently back at the clinic because of chronic kidney pain. Jalali said he would need to finish reconstructive surgery on Rezagul but with physical therapy she would recover nicely.

On the day we visited, Rezagul looked well-adjusted and almost happy. She was no longer married. Her father had welcomed her back home. She was excited about starting to go to school for the first time in her life.

In fact, with her burns covered up, Rezagul looked the picture of health as Brunel, the nurse, teased her � a testament to the success of the burns unit.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News
At least half of the victims at the Herat Regional Hospital Burns Unit are young children injured in everyday domestic accidents.

Filling a critical void
Brunel, who is usually based in the south of France and volunteers her time at the clinic through the French non-governmental organization HumaniTerra International, has been working with the burn unit�s senior medical team since 2003.

In fact, she was instrumental in starting up the unit � originally as part of the main hospital with only a handful of beds and no trained staff � after a meeting with then-governor of Herat, Ismael Khan, who emphasized the need for a place to treat burns.

In October 2007, after years of fundraising, planning, and training, Brunel and her Afghan colleagues opened the treatment center we were visiting.

On average, it receives 600 to 700 burn patients a year, the majority of whom are victims of domestic accidents, mostly children. In fact, one ward had dozens of infants � most of them with various limbs wrapped up in gauze and bandages, usually from boiling water that had spilled over from a kettle.

Still, a significant portion of the patients are victims of self-immolation � at least ten percent, according to statistics kept by the Burns Unit. "In 2003, when we started, we estimate 350 [self-immolation] cases a year for Herat," recalled Brunel. The number has decreased � at least for those victims from Herat Province � after the hospital and the local government launched a public awareness campaign.

"We have seen decreases," said Brunel. "And I hope with the second year of [the public awareness] campaign, it�s better again."

But they need funding, and time. While the incidents of self-immolation from within the province may be on the decline, cases from outside Herat are on the rise.

"It�s going to the other provinces," said Jalali. "Now we have patients from Farah Province, from Nimruz, from Badgis, from Helmand."

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News
The burns unit at the Herat Regional Hospital is the only one of its kind in Afghanistan.

A lost life
During our visit, we checked back on Shirin every now and then. She had long ago slipped into a delirious state and was murmuring nonstop. Her mother, Hanifa Ahmadi, hovered around her, occasionally stroking her hair.

Ahmadi � a thin, handsome woman who looks more Persian than Afghan � said she didn�t understand why her daughter had set herself on fire. "Shirin is always a happy girl and gets along with everyone," she said.

Ahmadi was convinced that Shirin would soon recover and leave the hospital, but Jalali was unequivocal.

"She doesn�t have long. Maybe she has one hour, an hour-and-a-half," he said. "It�s unfortunate, but we can�t do anything. Not with ninety percent burns all over the body, third degree burns."

Brunel agreed. "We can do nothing except�we give dignity," she said. She and an Afghan orderly had taken turns trying to make Shirin as comfortable as possible � giving her a tube to make her breathing easier, feeding her, or just straightening the blankets that covered her burnt body.

The end came later than Jalali had predicted, but come it did. Six hours after we first met Shirin, she died.

Members of her family rushed past us in the hallway, her mother, then her uncle, an aunt, and then her husband � he looked more confused than grief-stricken. They piled into Shirin�s room, wailing, walking back and forth around her bed, hands wringing; even the mother-in-law, with whom the young girl had been fighting just days before.

We stepped away quietly, gathering our things, preparing to leave and trying not to intrude.

But as we walked down the hallway one last time, I ducked my head into the room where Rezagul lay. She looked up, her eyes aglow, and she waved.

The picture of health.

Afghan girls burn themselves to escape marriage - World Blog - msnbc.com

For runaways, sex buys survival

Honey — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:09:14 GMT

Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Nicole Clark, 17, above, at her onetime sleeping spot.

ASHLAND, Ore. � She ran away from her group home in Medford, Ore., and spent weeks sleeping in parks and under bridges. Finally, Nicole Clark, 14 years old, grew so desperate that she accepted a young man�s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later.

Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Nicole Clark, right, with Kate Baxted, an outreach worker, who is helping her piece her life back together. As a runaway, Nicole recalled, �I felt trapped in a way I can't really explain.�

They had sex, and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money.
She agreed, fearing she had no choice. �Where was I going to go?� said Nicole, now 17 and living here, just down the Interstate from Medford. That first exchange of money for sex led to a downward spiral of prostitution that lasted for 14 months, until she escaped last year from a pimp who she said often locked her in his garage apartment for months.
�I didn�t know the town, and the police would just send me back to the group home,� Nicole said, explaining why she did not cut off the relationship once her first boyfriend became a pimp and why she did not flee prostitution when she had the chance. �I�d also fallen for the guy. I felt trapped in a way I can�t really explain.�
Most of the estimated 1.6 million children who run away each year return home within a week. But for those who do not, the desperate struggle to survive often means selling their bodies.
Nearly a third of the children who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year engage in sex for food, drugs or a place to stay, according to a variety of studies published in academic and public health journals. But this kind of dangerous barter system can quickly escalate into more formalized prostitution, when money changes hands. And then, child welfare workers and police officials say, it becomes extremely difficult to help runaways escape the streets. Many become more entangled in abusive relationships, and the law begins to view them more as teenage criminals than under-age victims.

Estimates of how many children are involved in prostitution vary wildly � ranging from thousands to tens of thousands. More solid numbers do not exist, in part because the Department of Justice has yet to study the matter even though Congress authorized it to do so in 2005 as part of a nationwide study of the illegal commercial sex industry.
But many child welfare advocates and officials in government and law enforcement say that while the data is scarce, they believe that the problem of prostituted children has grown, especially as the Internet has made finding clients easier.
�It�s definitely worsening,� said Sgt. Kelley O�Connell, a detective who until this year ran the Boston Police Department�s human-trafficking unit, echoing a sentiment conveyed in interviews with law enforcement officials from more than two dozen cities. �Gangs used to sell drugs,� she said. �Now many of them have shifted to selling girls because it�s just as lucrative but far less risky.�
Atlanta, which is one of the only cities where local officials have tried to keep data on the problem, has seen the number of teenage prostitutes working in the city grow to 334 in February from 251 in August 2007.
The barriers to rescuing these children are steep: state cuts to mental heath services, child welfare agencies incapable of preventing them from running away, a dearth of residential programs where the children can receive counseling.
After years of abuse, trauma and neglect, the children also tend to trust no one. The longer they are on the streets, experts say, the more likely they are to become involved in crime and uncooperative with the authorities.
�These kids enter prostitution and they literally disappear,� said Bradley Myles, deputy director of the Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that directly serves children involved in prostitution and other trafficking victims. �And in those rare moments that they reappear, it�s in these revolving-door situations where they�re handled by people who have no idea or training in how to help them. So the kids end up right back on the street.�

The Flip Interview
That revolving door is what an F.B.I. agent, Dan Garrabrant, desperately hoped to stop in Interview Room One at the Atlantic City Police Department on Sept. 5, 2006.
Conducting what the police call a �flip� interview, Mr. Garrabrant was trying every tactic he knew to persuade a petite 16-year-old girl named Roxanne L. from Queens, N.Y., to stop being a prostitute and to inform, or flip, on her pimp.

Jim Hartman, Brand Canyon Company
Antoin Thurman, who was sentenced in 2006, recalled that as a pimp, he would work to win a girl's trust: �get her nails done, take her to buy an outfit, take her out to eat, make her feel wanted.�

Sending the girl home was not the answer. Home was where her mentally ill, crack-addicted mother lived. Home was where the problems had started.
But Mr. Garrabrant also knew that she would flee if he sent her to a youth shelter. And with her would go his best chance at prosecuting the real criminal, her pimp.
A social worker for six years before joining the F.B.I. almost two decades ago, Mr. Garrabrant has been honored by anti-trafficking experts, prosecutors and the police as one of the best flip interviewers in the country.
On this day, however, he was getting nowhere, according to a recording of the interview and his notes.
While Roxanne had all the signs of being controlled by a pimp � a tattoo with initials on her neck, a rehearsed script about how she was new to the work � she adamantly denied working for anyone.
Mr. Garrabrant had only an hour before the local police would take Roxanne to a shelter. Trying to ease the mood, he started by asking her why she had run away from home. She told him she had been raped by a relative when she was 12 years old. At 14, she left home because her mother�s boyfriend had become abusive.
Soon, running out of time, he zeroed in.
�What�s the worst part about working the streets?� he asked.
�Honestly,� Roxanne said, giving him a cold stare, �having to look at the tricks and tell if they are cops or not.�
�So a pimp never approached you and tried to turn you out?� Mr. Garrabrant asked.
�Yeah, they tried, but I ran,� she said, maintaining that she was �renegading,� or working without a pimp.

Mr. Garrabrant�s task was to get Roxanne to consider leaving her pimp without forcing her to admit she had one. He needed to push hard enough to break her from her rehearsed script, without descending into a frustrating game of wits, a contest in liar�s poker. And he had to do all this at exactly the wrong time and place � at the police station after an arrest for solicitation, when the girl felt most panicked and most angry about being treated like a criminal.
�Look, I want to help you,� he said, after several failed attempts to get her to acknowledge her pimp. He told her that he might be able to enter her into a residential program in California that offered counseling and classes to girls leaving prostitution.
�Yeah, I know,� she said, as she looked down and pensively picked at her nails.
�Give me some time,� Mr. Garrabrant pleaded as he handed her a card and asked her to keep it handy. With no time left, he released Roxanne back to the local police, who took her to the youth shelter.
Four hours later, she disappeared. Seventeen days after that, according to the F.B.I, she was found stabbed to death by the pimp she had so adamantly denied existed.
In one of her pockets she had Mr. Garrabrant�s card.
�Two days, that�s all I needed to get her to stay away from her pimp and I think things would�ve ended up differently,� said Mr. Garrabrant, shaking his head in frustration. �I still don�t understand how these guys loop these girls in so far.�

A Dangerous Dependency
A runaway�s relationship with a pimp does not occur by accident. It takes work.
After using court records to compile a database of over a hundred convicted pimps and where each is incarcerated, The New York Times wrote letters to each more than two years ago. In the ensuing interviews by phone and in letters, more than two dozen convicted and still incarcerated pimps described the complicated roles they played as father figure, landlord, boss and boyfriend to the girls who worked for them. They said they went after girls with low self-esteem, prior sexual experience and a lack of options.
�With the young girls, you promise them heaven, they�ll follow you to hell,� said Harvey Washington, a pimp who began serving a four-year sentence in Arizona in 2005 for pandering a 17-year-old and three adult prostitutes. �It all depends on her being so love-drunk off of me that she will do anything for me.�
While most of the pimps said they prefer adult women because teenage runaways involve more legal risks, they added that juveniles fetch higher prices from clients and are far easier to manipulate.
Virtually all the juveniles who become involved in prostitution are runaways and become pimp-controlled, according to law enforcement officials and social workers. Built of desperation and fear, the bonds they form with their pimps are difficult to break. Some girls continue working for pimps even after the pimps are incarcerated.
�The problem is that there is no methadone for a bad relationship,� said Rachel Lloyd, a former child prostitute and the director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a program in New York that helps girls escape and stay away from prostitution.
The pimps view themselves as talent managers, not exploiters.
�My job is to make sure she has what she needs, personal hygiene, get her nails done, take her to buy an outfit, take her out to eat, make her feel wanted,� said another pimp, Antoin Thurman, who was sentenced in 2006 to three years for pandering and related charges in Buckeye, Ariz. �But I keep the money.�

Wayne Banks Jr., a pimp serving at least 40 years in Hazelton, W. Va., for the sex trafficking of a minor and related charges, wrote that the girls have to be convinced that the pimp is best equipped to handle their clients and finances.
�Seems more despicable to me to give something so valuable away as opposed to selling it,� he wrote, describing his pitch to persuade girls that prostitution was a smart business decision.
When recruiting, some pimps said they prowled homeless shelters, bus stations and shopping malls or posed in newspaper advertisements as photographers and talent scouts. Others said they worked Internet chat rooms and phone-sex lines.
�I�ll look for a younger female with a backpack,� said Mr. Thurman, describing how he used to drive near schools after hours. �I�m thinking she�s leaving home, she�s leaving for a reason, she had a fight with her parents or she just wants to leave home.�
Mr. Banks wrote that he preferred using �finders� fees�: $100 to anyone who sent a prospect his way. His only condition was that the girl had to be told up front that he was a pimp.
Runaways are especially attractive recruits because most are already engaging in survival sex for a place to stay, said Evelyn Diaz, who is serving a nine-year sentence in a federal prison in Connecticut for three counts of sex trafficking of minors.
�Some become very loyal to you since you take them under your wing,� she wrote.
Controlling girls through beatings or threats was common, but coercion was not an effective basis for a lasting relationship, most pimps emphasized.
�Everything about the game is by choice, not by force,� said Bryant Bell, who is serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence in Georgia after pleading guilty in 2002 to helping run a prostitution ring that involved girls as young as 10 years old.
For those girls not already engaged in survival sex, the grooming process was gradual and calculated. At first, the sex is consensual. Before long, the girl is asked to turn occasional tricks to help pay bills.
�I might start by asking her to help me by sleeping with a friend,� Mr. Washington said in a telephone interview. �Then I push her from there.�

A Better System
Ten years ago, the Dallas Police Department found an average of fewer than 10 minors working as prostitutes every year, along with one pimp working with them. In 2007, the department found 119 girls involved in prostitution and arrested 44 pimps.
The city�s child prostitution problem has grown over time. But the bigger reason for the change is how the department handles the cases, using a special unit and some unusual techniques.
Previously, said Sgt. Byron A. Fassett, who leads the department�s effort, girls working as prostitutes were handled as perpetrators rather than sexual assault victims. If a 45-year-old man had sex with a 14-year-old girl and no money changed hands, she was likely to get counseling and he was likely to get jail time for statutory rape, Sergeant Fassett said. If the same man left $80 on the table after having sex with her, she would probably be locked up for prostitution and he would probably go home with a fine as a john.
The department�s flip interviews almost always failed, and even if they worked, there was no place to put the girls to receive treatment. Officers resisted investigating what they viewed as a nuisance, not a crime. Prosecutors regularly refused the cases against pimps because the girls made for shaky witnesses and unsympathetic plaintiffs.
Frustrated with this system, Sergeant Fassett started combing through old case files, looking for patterns. One stuck out: 80 percent of the prostituted children the department had handled had run away from home at least four or more times a year.
�It dawned on me, if you want to effectively deal with teen prostitutes, you need to look for repeat runaways,� he said.
In 2005, Sergeant Fassett created the �High Risk Victim� unit in the Dallas Police Department, which flags any juvenile in the city who runs away from home four or more times in a given year. About 200 juveniles per year fit that description. If one of those children is picked up by the police anywhere in the country, the child is directed back to Sergeant Fassett�s unit, which immediately begins investigating the juvenile�s background.
The unit�s strength is timing. If the girls are arrested for prostitution, they are at their least cooperative. So the unit instead targets them for such minor offenses as truancy or picks them up as high-risk victims, speaking to them when their guard is down. Only later, as trust builds, do officers and social workers move into discussions of prostitution.
Repeat runaways are not put in juvenile detention but in a special city shelter for up to a month, receiving counseling.
Three quarters of the girls who get treatment do not return to prostitution.
The results of the Dallas system are clear: in the past five years, the Dallas County district attorney�s office has on average indicted and convicted or won guilty pleas from over 90 percent of the pimps arrested. In virtually all of those cases, the children involved in the prostitution testified against their pimps, according to the prosecutor�s office. Over half of those convictions started as cases involving girls who were picked up by the police not for prostitution but simply as repeat runaways.
In 2007, Congress nearly approved a proposal to spend more than $55 million for cities to create pilot programs across the country modeled on the Dallas system. But after a dispute with President George W. Bush over the larger federal budget, the plan was dropped and Congress never appropriated the money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/us...nted=4&_r=2&hp

Right wing Canadian women rock!????

WhoAmI — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:51:56 GMT

Quote:

Right-wing women rock

Looking at the shoes tells a lot about a female's political persuasion

By IAN ROBINSON
Last Updated: 25th October 2009, 3:35am

The recent election of Danielle Smith as leader of the Wildrose Alliance reminded me that among the many things I love about the libertarian/right wing are the women.

Could be our slogan: Come for the culture war ... stay for the chicks.

Right-wing women rock.

Not for us the sturdy, honest calves of the New Democrat/Green Party female, honed on eco-tourist rainforest hikes.

Those legs are often on unfortunate display, extending from a knee-length tweed skirt as hairy as the legs themselves, and end in a pair of Birkenstocks.

I have yet to see a pair of Birkenstock women's shoes that didn't look like part of the required uniform for police SWAT teams. Sensible shoes are one thing ... quite another to don a pair that look like they're meant for rappelling down the sides of buildings with a Heckler & Koch sniper rifle slung over your shoulder.

The primary reason our womenfolk are at war with the looming spectre of the nanny state is because you can't buy Jimmy Choos in a socialist paradise.

The only sensible footwear you'll find in a right-wing woman's closet are the Nike cross-trainers that go with her gym membership.

Everything else has a three-inch heel. Minimum.

Left-wing drabs recycle. Right-wing women shop -- and the government measures how much they shop every month to find out whether we're still in a recession. Basically, the world economy depends on right-wing women buying shoes.

You never hear a right-wing woman break out statistics pointing out that only 25% of elected offices in Canada are held by women, and then whining about it.

No. A right-wing woman wants to get elected, she runs for office.

If she wins, great. If she loses ... well, there's always more shoe shopping.

Left-wing women burn enormous quantities of fossil fuels to drive across the city to a farmer's market to purchase virtually the same carrot you can get at the neighbourhood Sobey's a couple of blocks from your house for half the price, all in the name of making the environment happy.

A right-wing woman hits the gym, swings past Sobey's and has dinner on the table by the time you get home ... while her left-wing counterpart is still stuck in traffic listening to Sarah McLachlan on her iPod and feeling morally superior about her carrot choices.

And when that plate of food is put in front of you by the right-wing hottie you had the good sense to marry, it will be 100% tofu-free. If you're lucky, she just remembered to buy steak and forgot about the carrot entirely.

Right-wing women have traditional families, so they want to raise them themselves ... or at the very least by a nanny they've vetted, rather than abdicating that responsibility to the state.

They know that the good life costs money ... so they're not sure why the average Canadian is handing -- on average! -- half their income to smarmy government apparatchiks who spend it mostly on stupid crap.

Our women are a genuine asset when they enter politics because they've spent their lives figuring out how to live within their family's means ... while still affording a couple of pairs of those Jimmy Choos.

Because most of them have careers and work hard, they understand the value of a dollar, allowing you a steak lifestyle on a hamburger income ... and they know they can spend their family's money more intelligently than some faceless bureaucrat with a passion for public art or totalitarian city planning.

Right-wing women are essentially libertarians ... they don't take well to being bossed around and they don't like bossing other people around unless it's to tell them they can't spend money.

If they can tell their kid he can't have the newest Xbox upgrade and make it stick ... if they can make a husband understand it makes more sense to put money in an RRSP than going to the Super Bowl with the guys every year ... if they can pull all that off, then fixing health care shouldn't be too big a stretch.

And in case you're not convinced, to indicate the utter superiority of the right-wing woman over the left-wing variant ... just turn on The View.

The left has Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.

We've got Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Checkmate.

Right-wing women rock | Ian Robinson | Columnists | Comment | Calgary Sun

Wow. I thought only American right-wingers were so condescending, sexist, and stupid. I guess you've got them in Canada, too.

More bullshit: Creole Cream biscuits are "racist"

A*O — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:49:28 GMT

Oh give me a fucking break. I am getting SO pissed off with this "everyone and everything is racist" bullshit. The people who whine about this nonsense do more harm to their cause than good and make themselves look like the fools they are. Do they spend their entire lives (and generous Govt grants no doubt) looking for specious things to take offence at?

Question: Does the term "creole" have a negative or racist connotation in the US where the word actually originated and isn't it rather presumptuous for an Australian aborigine to assume that just because he's offended others will be too?

Quote:

Coles backs down over 'racist ' biscuit
JOSHUA HOEY
October 27, 2009 - 10:21AM

The name of Coles' Creole Creams has come under fire from University of Queensland academic Sam Watson.

Supermarket giant Coles will change the name of an in-house brand of biscuits amid claims it is racist.

Coles Spokesman Jim Cooper said the name of the "You'll Love Coles" brand of chocolate and vanilla biscuits, called Creole Creams, will be changed as part of the company-wide rebranding of Coles products.

The name change comes on the back of claims of racism, with the word Creole used to describe a person of mixed European and African ancestry.

"The word Creole comes from a period when people's humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream. This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis," Sam Watson, the deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, told brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday.

But Mr Cooper today disputed the racist claims and said the name Creole Creams referred to the "well-known Creole cuisine style that originated in the US.''

"The biscuits in question were named in reference to the well-known Creole cuisine style that originated in the US. It was certainly not intended as a racial reference, nor intended to cause offence," Mr Cooper said this morning.

He said the product had been stocked on Coles' shelves for three years and the company had never received a complaint.

However, he said the name would be changed as part of a rebranding exercise.

"That said, the product is about to undergo a packaging redesign, as part of our broader re-branding of 'You’ll Love Coles' products to simply 'Coles', and the product will be re-named as part of that process."

Opinion on the naming of the biscuits Creole Creams has been divided, with some internet blog posters and radio talkback callers unaware of its racial meaning.

Mr Watson said yesterday the use of a racially-loaded word for a chocolate and vanilla biscuit was thoughtless.

"The word Creole comes from a period when people's humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream. This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis," Mr Watson said.

"People need to exercise their intellect. This so-called blending was actually the institutionalised rape of black women. They were victims of brutal regimes of rape and victimisation."

Mr Watson described the biscuit name as deeply insensitive and indicative of a "deep undercurrent of racism in white Australian society".

"It virtually infects every level of Australia's consciousness, language, culture and history," he said.

"Why the need to use that sort of language to market a confectionery?"

Creole cuisine is a style of spicy cooking originating in Louisiana.

It combines influences from Europe, Africa, North and Latin America, and India, and is known for dishes such as Jambalaya, Gumbo, and Pecan pie.

Coles’ Creole Cream is a chocolate and vanilla biscuit similar to Arnott’s Delta Creams and Oreos.

Source: brisbanetimes.com.au

Lebanese to Israel: Hands off our hummus!

celeb_2006 — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 07:18:54 GMT

Lebanese chefs prepare a massive bowl of hummus that weighs more then 4,500 pounds in Beirut Saturday during a bid to break a world record previously held by Israel.

Lebanese to Israel: Hands off our hummus! - Yahoo! Singapore News

BEIRUT � Lebanese chefs prepared a massive plate of hummus weighing over two tons Saturday that broke a world record organizers said was previously held by Israel _ a bid to reaffirm proprietorship over the popular Middle Eastern dip.
"Come and fight for your bite, you know you're right!" was the slogan for the event _ part of a simmering war over regional cuisine between Lebanon and Israel, which have had tense political relations for decades.
Lebanese businessmen accuse Israel of stealing a host of traditional Middle Eastern dishes, particularly hummus, and marketing them worldwide as Israeli.
"Lebanon is trying to win a battle against Israel by registering this new Guinness World Record and telling the whole world that hummus is a Lebanese product, its part of our traditions," said Fady Jreissati, vice president of operations at International Fairs and Promotions group, the event's organizer.
Hummus _ made from mashed chickpeas, sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic _ has been eaten in the Middle East for centuries. Its exact origin is unknown, though it's generally seen as an Arab dish.
But it is also immensely popular in Israel _ served in everyday meals and at many restaurants _ and its popularity is growing around the globe.
The issue of food copyright was raised last year by the head of Lebanon's Association of Lebanese Industrialists, Fadi Abboud, when he announced plans to sue Israel to stop it from marketing hummus and other regional dishes as Israeli.
But to do that, Lebanon must formally register the product as Lebanese. The association is still in the process of collecting documents and proof supporting its claim for that purpose.
Lebanese industrialists cite, as an example, the lawsuit over feta cheese in which a European Union court ruled in 2002 the cheese must be made with Greek sheep and goats milk to bear the name feta. That ruling is only valid for products sold in the EU.
Abboud says that process took seven years and realizes Lebanon's fight with Israel is an uphill battle.
Meanwhile, he says, events like Saturday's serve to remind the world that hummus is not Israeli.
"If we don't tell Israel that enough is enough, and we don't remind the world that it's not true that hummus is an Israeli traditional dish, they (Israelis) will keep on marketing it as their own," he said Saturday.
Some 300 chefs were involved in preparing Saturday's massive ceramic plate of hummus in a huge tent set up in downtown Beirut. The white-uniformed chefs used 2,976 pounds (1,350 kilograms) of mashed chickpeas, 106 gallons (400 liters) of lemon juice and 57 pounds (26 kilograms) of salt to make the dish, weighing 4,532 pounds (2,056 kilograms).
It was not clear what the former Israeli record was, and organizers gave conflicting reports on when it was made.
But chefs and visitors broke into cheers and applause when a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records presented Abboud with a certificate verifying Lebanon had broken the previous record. The plate was then decorated with the red, green and white Lebanese flag.
A similar attempt to set a new world record will be held Sunday for the largest serving of tabbouleh, a salad made of chopped parsley and tomatoes, that Lebanon also claims as its own.